Like many
people, I grew up with Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales. Only now though, after
20 years of being an Andersen enthusiast and 10 years of professionally
studying literature, I can fully appreciate how lucky I was with those two plain
paperbacks – Andersen’s selected fairy tales, volumes 1 and 2. One was red and
one was green, cheap paper smelled with dust and glue, and both things got read
into tatters as quickly as only The Lord
of the Rings would afterwards. The thing is, the Russian texts were really,
really good. Now, having read the originals, I am able to applaud the translators,
but when a child, the spell simply worked on me. Most children’s editions have
colourful illustrations but only simplified retellings of what Andersen had
written: they are stripped of the magic of the words.
Not that the
visuals were not important. My mother tells that I actually learned how to read
by watching a Thumbelina filmstrip. I
would demand her to play it and read it aloud dozens of times, which she stoically
did. In case someone has never seen a filmstrip, it is a series of pictures
with subtitles printed on a celluloid tape, which, in a dark room, can be
projected on a white surface (like a sheet hanged on the wall). You could
advance to the next frame by turning a knob on the projector. As far as I know,
filmstrips were mostly used for educational purposes before they were overtaken
by the VHS, but at least in Soviet Russia there was an insane amount of
children’s filmstrips. Without cinema (not in our village) or colour television
(not in our house), they were the best thing in the world. And, unlike the TV,
they had no ads.
For kids’
entertainment, these filmstrips’ text-to-picture ratio was remarkably high. Thumbelina, for example, contained only
a slightly shortened text of Anna Ganzen’s translation. Before anyone showed me
how to read, I apparently managed to decipher the words while I listened to mum
reading them and compared them with the pictures above. This, of course, required
remembering the text by heart – I still do. It is clear, however, that a three
year old will not listen to a text so many times if not for the pictures. It
was not just the story or just the images – they were fused with each other and
with mum’s intonations. That’s the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk for you: visuals and the story merged in drama! A
shame he never wrote an opera about Thumbelina. Just imagine the swallow’s
leitmotif, similar to his Valkyries and Norns, and the audience shaking in transcendental
terror. There is more sense in that than it may seem. The swallow is from the
underground. The swallow can fly. The swallow is death and deliverance. Thumbelina
wants to leave with him/her, but she is reluctant because the Mouse will be upset. Just reread that fairy tale: Andersen
is, let’s face it, scary as hell.
Anyway, my
parents realised their daughter is now a Thumbelina
geek, and gave me presents: the audio drama on vinyl and a few illustrated
books. This is how my collection started – three or four years after I was
born. Most illustrations didn’t really work with me, but I had my favourites, and
I loved to compare them with each other. With time, I started to enjoy looking at how the
artists deal with the controversy of the situation: a girl has just been born,
albeit from a flower, but everyone wants to marry her. Should she be portrayed
as a child, teenager, or a little young woman? Or maybe as something abstractly
youthful? This made me wonder, eventually, if the human soul has an age – I was
reading Pushkin and Gogol by then, which will draw almost everyone towards
mysticism. As I grew up, I came to think of my Thumbelinas as a collection, and would buy a new one from time to
time. One my friend got confused and gave me a Cinderella
for my birthday. It is then that I realised that, for many people, Thumbelina is just another story about a
girl magically getting married. For me, Andersen’s fairy tales were mostly
about freezing to death but longing for heaven, joy and love. Think The Little Match Girl. Or The Snow Queen. Or Thumbelina, for that matter.
It is this uncertainty
of what Thumbelina is actually about
that sparkled my collector’s interest in the later years. Despite my early connection
with this particular story, I adore all Andersen’s fairy tales. Even his
novels. It would be unfair to say that I actually like Thumbelina more than The
Steadfast Tin Soldier, or The Little
Mermaid, or The Tinderbox (although
it’s clear from these four titles that I’m into his early works). I am
absolutely fascinated, though, with how people read Thumbelina, and how they think children should read it. Unlike many
other Andersen’s fairy tales, which are clearly tragic (The Little Mermaid) or clearly sarcastic and bitter (The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Princess and
the Pea), Thumbelina treats us, formally
speaking, with a chain of adventures that culminate in a happy ending. I
already mentioned, of course, how the swallow is a somewhat dead flying entity
from the underground, of whom the little Prince is afraid for a reason, and who
is uncannily genderless in the Danish original. And what about Thumbelina’s
mother, of whom we never hear after the first page – is that really a happy end
from the human perspective? Andersen is a good storyteller, especially when it
comes to such strong feelings as a mother’s: his silence on the matter is
important. It adds to the otherworldliness of the finale that in Danish the
Prince is described as a Flower Angel rather than the conventional cute fairy
known from the later illustrations and especially Don Bluth’s animation movie.
This is understandable: conventional cute fairies were not yet a convention in
1835.
At the same
time, it is undeniable that the darker aspects are much subtler in Thumbelina than they than they are in e.g.
The Little Mermaid and The Steadfast Tin Soldier. It is
possible, in fact, to ignore them at all; a ‘retold for children’ text helps,
but even the original can be read optimistically. This ambiguity is a part of Thumbelina’s
charm, and an important part of the challenge for the illustrator. In my
collection of almost 50 illustrated editions, illustrations range from the
aesthetics of a cheerful child’s play to interestingly realistic ones and then
to macabre symbolism that will be disturbing to many adults. There is now and
then the silly story about little creatures having fun, and the many generic
works that borrow almost everything from each other. And then there are genius
works that do not fit into any category. I started this blog because I would
like to share my thoughts on specific editions, on Andersen’s fairy tales in
general, and on how illustration in children’s books works.
Right now,
my collection is predominantly Russian, although a few editions reproduce
illustrations from the European countries and the US, and I acquired some very
nice items during my study in the UK. It is clear, however, that it is
impossible to be a completist when it comes to such a popular and beloved work,
so I will be very grateful for
references to editions you think are of interest...
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